


as if that day were here

by 24601lesbians



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Better Living Industries, Enemies to Friends, Escape Attempts, Graffiti, Growing Up, Imprisonment, banned materials
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-17 14:47:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9329888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/24601lesbians/pseuds/24601lesbians
Summary: “Okay.” Whatever he wants; Mikey just wants him to reconcile his frustration with his skill. Pushing it down beyond the thoughts he has every day, that’s going to hurt him if it hasn’t already. He leaves again, and Mikey fools with the tuner, scrolls the little tick mark all the way from one side to the other at top speed, then does it slowly enough for the stations to focus briefly. Between two dull piano stations, he gets a buzz, like there’s some kind of potential station. Everything else comes in fine. His finger hovers above the off button, and when the static snaps into a voice, he barely hears “It’s just late enough to start lookin’ alive again--” before he pushes the button in surprise.





	1. turn your back

The January that follows Frank’s third birthday is when the Success Benefit Structure laws pass, one by one. By the time he begins preschool, schools have no arts programs because 100% of the funding is being reallocated to other programs that have greater need. Specifically, fields of science involving animals and plants. Exercise replaces the art-related classes.

 

Gerard is eight when he decides to take some of Grandma’s pens to draw Scooby Doo mysteries for Mikey. He won’t understand them yet, but whatever. It’s Gerard’s job to take care of him and tell him stories later. Gerard has to _remember_ it first (there’s a fake Scooby, and a rocket, and the Mystery Machine is actually pink!). He stops in the doorway before he asks Grandma for some pens, just watches while she dumps pens, ink, brushes, charcoal, pencils, and some other stuff in a shoebox. It’s kind of puzzling, but he thinks it’s kind of cool that she’s putting it all in one place. He can ask for the pens later. “Grandma?”

She turns around with one hand on her chest and the other holding the shoebox lid. “Goodness! What do you need?”

“Will you watch Scooby with Mikey? And me?”

“You boys really should watch that less. You’ll wear out the tapes. But I’ll be in in a moment.” She smiles at him, maybe kind of sad.

“Okay,” he says, mind already elsewhere.

  

By the time Frank is five, his mother and grandfather quit smoking. They give him food that’s kind of weird, but he’s reminded of Star Wars when he looks at it, so he eats it and pretends he’s in space. His cousin doesn’t smoke anymore either, and he hears the word ”law” shouted downstairs a lot when they think he’s napping.

  

Gerard is most of the way through fifth grade and Grandma stops having friends over to knit with. He’s read enough Nancy Drew—almost all of them, he reminds himself proudly, even if it’s just because there aren’t cartoons anymore—to look for details and _clues_. She probably goes to where they are because they don’t have noisy little Mikeys who take loud steps while Gerard eavesdrops to find out what knitting is really like. The other people’s kids probably don’t wait for her quiet, strong voice to show itself in the tangle of talk that her friends produce. He wonders why he never thought to follow her on her walks in the evening.

  

Frank can’t have Count Chocula on his eighth birthday because Mom said that one fancy company said sugary cereals ought to be discontinued and raised prices too high for her family to get one of the last boxes. He’s in his room later when his grandfather gives him a shoebox of white paper with black lines. “Is this music?” he asks quietly, incredulously. “But you can’t have this, can you?” And that’s when his mother walks in to tell them it’s time for dinner. _And she sees_. He knows that it was a secret even before she turns red in the face and whirls on her father-in-law. “ _You can’t give him this!”_ is barely out of her mouth when Frank purposely knocks the stack onto the floor.

He doesn’t pick up some of the sheets beneath his bed. Music that isn’t banned is so lame that he thinks even the paper kind has to be better than _pianos_ and wind chimes, ew, (every song on the radio sounds the same) even though he can’t make it make sense.

After he talks Mom down, his grandfather notices the missing pages, and must tell his son, because Dad comes in without warning to draw a bunch of lines on the back of the third sheet, calls some of them by letter and some by number. Grandpa starts quizzing Frank on them some days before Mom comes home. “You need to know _something_ useful, Frankie.” Frank keeps his mouth shut.

  

Gerard thinks about telling Mikey that he’s seen Grandma breaking _the law_. The new law, the law all over the news. More than the film awards (beyond lame this year, all the movies are so BAD) and celebrities fighting and terrorism (and he would never tell anyone, _even Grandma_ , that he thinks some of the attacks were, like, stuff that could have been easily avoided, and he’s only _thirteen_ but he sort of saw them coming? It’s strange). She had a can of paint and he swears she was singing something _banned_ the other day, _holy Batman_. Mikey tells him not to use bad words in his head in case the suit people they keep seeing all over listen to his brain, and he laughs, but he does avoid them. For now.

 

Pills are getting kind of cheap. To his understanding, his family is getting kind of broke. Frank’s mother is the first in his house to buy Better Brand pills. His father picks up more when they run out.

  

Just as Gerard is about to enter high school and starts worrying about whether older kids will hate him specifically because he’s only a ninth grader, Helena starts pouring the booze on top of the fridge out in the sink every now and then. Gerard knows, because Mikey would never touch it, Gerard’s only thought about touching it, and his mother seems to have forgotten about it when there are so many cans of Diet Coke in their fridge. Mikey helps Helena even if he doesn’t completely understand. When she asks him to (eventually, he does it without being told), he rewrites all the grocery lists without adding his mother’s pills, and hopes she’ll forget them.

She doesn't.


	2. the curtain rises

Frank’s parents have split. His mom offers pills and his father says “When you’re older.” He has no trees to climb at either parent’s apartment. Curfews keep him firmly at home after school hours plus the time it takes to eat and do homework because he doesn’t have a job. His grandfather fucked off to Florida or something, went with a Better Living pod. He has never had instruments to play his grandfather’s music on, but he knows an incredible (maybe it is, maybe not—there’s really no way to tell, because he can’t compare notes with anyone) amount of music theory in addition to memorizing about half of the collection of sheet music. Luckily, because it’s in another  _ state _ now.

On his twelfth Halloween, he goes out after curfew and draws ghosts and shitty cartoon monsters on the sides of seven or eight dumpsters and walls and garages. He’s caught before he gets to the ninth. The jail cell is filthy, ultra-grimy to the point where it’s not impressive anymore. He’s dehydrated to the brink of hoarseness when his mother comes the next afternoon.

“I got a call from the school, Frank,” she says, tapping her foot. Who the fuck has time to tap their feet. “Why didn’t  _ you _ call me?”

He rubs at his temples and lets his eyebrows pull down before he looks up at her. “Is this a joke? Is this a  _ joke to you _ ? You care about the school calling you so much, I bet that one’s embarrassing, Ma.” He blinks hard when his eyes water. “You can’t do anything more.”

“Your charges are marked as paint related. That can’t be ignored. You’re a minor, my tiny boy, my felon who isn’t even in high school yet, Frankie.” Her voice breaks twice and she plows on. His gut says he can’t listen to her.

His next cell appears to have been painted a few times. It smells so chemically clean that he almost reels from it. They don’t make him change clothes, but they certainly look like they would if they could. His sentence is “exclusive of interaction,” which is something he’s told constantly. Before they close the door.

They gave him a new set of clothes, a matching set of black pants and white shirt. He leaves them in his preferred corner and refuses to change into them for fear that they’ll take his old things, jeans that barely smell like dirt anymore and a dark green t-shirt. Not comfortable to sleep in, but they almost round out the memories of his home. They control when he eats, when he pees, how every day will be spent until he’s twenty-seven. Not what he thinks of.

“You will not be medicated,” they tell him, as if it’s a privilege and he missed out on the way his family changed because of dosing.

He’s been locked up for somewhere between two and three months when he stops counting the days. It doesn’t make anything move faster or even act as an illusion for him to feel like time moves at all. All of his tick marks overlapped the previous prisoners’ anyway, uneven scratches layered over each other over the paint over the cinderblocks that keep him here.

The dingy white layer of paint over the corner he sleeps in is starting to flake away and he touches it constantly, something to do while he listens to irregular scraping from the outside wall. It’s got this medium-pitched, determined rhythm that he forces himself awake for. Anything to break the monotony of sleeping, pacing, then eating the dry pellets and the water that leaves his throat drier than when he started drinking it.

Down here, he’s nothing, until the day the scraping stops and he hears another person’s voice.

“You pace, don’t you?”

Dry, female, soft with age. He blinks at the corner where his shared wall meets the outside wall, rakes over it with his eyes until he sees the tiny gap. “Yes.”

“I did, once. You have a name?”

It’s been so long since he was called anything besides 382-15; he’s not sure how to answer, or if he even should. People still go to prison for things that actually hurt other people. Right? He refuses to let it bother him when he curls up to sleep instead of conversing with her.

“I’m Helena, if you need anything.”

The next time his neighbor says something is a few sleep-pace-eat-pace cycles later. “How long?”

“How long have I been here, or what’s my sentence?”

“Pick one.”

“They told me fifteen to life.”

“That seems to be the lighter side.” He can almost hear her mind latch onto the fact. “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“Hi twelve, I’m life. Was it graffiti?”

A bubble of frustration works its way from his stomach. “I didn’t even have the chance to get good before I got caught.”

“I wasn’t that good, and I did it for the last eight or so years before they got me. I’m sixty-seven, sweetheart.”

“Oh.”

She whistles tunelessly instead of continuing. He thinks about the little red acrylic shapes he would leave on the sides of apartment buildings and alleys, stars and linked up circles or triangles. God, he liked those. When they feed him next, he experiments with breaking a pellet to dip into the water for a paste, but it hardly smudges on the wall at all, and it turns white when it dries.

He drums his fingers on his legs and shuffles his bare feet against the not-warm-not-cold floor until his friend stops snoring and starts telling him about her paintings, her grandkids, the last outdoor mural she saw before the laws for Success Benefit Structure passed and it got painted over.

“Was graffiti all you really did to get here?”

“It’s fifty-fifty, really.”

Frank doesn’t want to push. Just in case she maybe killed someone.

“I’m Frank,” he remembers to say one day, halfway through another sentence. 

Helena snorts and he feels himself turning red, even though it’s at least a little funny. And impossible for her to see him. He stumbles when she prompts him to keep telling the story of the bad haircut his dad had once, and how his mom hid photos of it in silly places for him to find.

When he can hear the morning guards’ footsteps receding, another round comes, which doesn’t make sense until his door is open and a gun--a  _ gun_\--directs him to be blindfolded. After a firm push away and a pull toward, he hears the hallway around him. He’s cuffed to a bar on the wall opposite the entrance to his cell. The low voices sound kind of weird, but it becomes evident that they’re cleaning his floor, his horrid little toilet, and the showerhead in the corner beside it. He’s torn between hoping it becomes a regular occurrence (it’s a relief to smell the cleaning products again, because he felt _ disgusting_) and praying it never does (there was a fucking gun to his head, jesus christ). It feels wrong, after they hose him off. He feels dirtier than he did before the water touched his skin. 

“Are you in there?” he asks, letting out a tiny laugh at the ridiculousness of the question before the feeling that prompted him returns in full force. She is all he has in the present.

She never knows, but he always mouths the answer with her: “Old, not senile, Frankie.”

“Do you—do you happen to know any songs that are from before?”

Helena laughs _for_ _real_ , and the mischief in it makes him wish he’d known more cool old people. “My friend’s stepson has an enormous record collection. CDs and tapes flowing out of his closet.”

“Where does he live?” Frank asks, confused.

“A basement under their basement, on the edge of the city. That was a family that thought ahead.”

He nods into the silence. If only. She starts humming, and it reminds him of how his whole family used to do that. Before it was socially unacceptable. Whole songs would be too risky, but he wants to hear her full voice once, maybe after they’re out.

Helena makes it so he doesn’t itch to count days. The air has cycled and he just sort of  _ feels _ the year behind him. There were weeks of it being so damp it was hard to breathe, damp and warm, then it felt chillier, and now the lack of humidity gives him the impression of them needing artificial heat to level out the temperature down in the cells. “I think it’s my birthday,” he whispers to himself. 

 

The last time she tries to talk to him is about three years later and seconds before his pellet delivery slot opens, and she isn’t being as quiet as usual.

He’s never been lucky, but hearing them—there were two sets of footsteps—open her door and pull her out while she first questioned, then yelled hopelessly at them, that makes his guts twist up and break down. He chokes out something and shoulders the wall between them, desperate for a way to salvage that kind of bond. He  _ doesn’t fucking have any other fucking people _ and probably never will again. It’s bullshit, and he screams that it is, because it’s fucking true and she’s so important. She’s important and he knows that that’s why they aren’t just taking her somewhere else.

When she’s gone, he wonders what kind of miracle worker decided that he could have a friend for so long before getting caught. 

 

He has had no one to talk to, and he could be fantasizing about a feeder coming down one day and almost sarcastically asking, “Do you want out yet? Somebody thinks you’d do some good.”

Frank might imagine it, but the lights in the corners of his cell dim just a fraction.

The door swings open. “You’re nineteen, go fucking see the world.” The lights drop to nothing and he jerks away from the darkness, huddling into himself when he hears a series of steady ticks. The feeder flicks a switch, still cranking, and the flashlight throws her feet into view. He feels her grab his elbow and that suddenly has him rushing left, left, right, down more steps, and around a curve.

Frank hears the truck before he smells it. “Courtesy of Super Stinga,” a figure announces, waving grandly and wearing fucking insane marbled pants with about three different shades of yellow on the rest of his clothes. “Walls trended while you were slammed, kid, so hop in before they all lock up without us on the right side.” Frank obeys. “Milkshakes. Strap in.”

Eventually, under all of the chatter the man (nobody’s name is “Super Stinga,” what the hell) produces, Frank sees the pattern of doubling back and taking the long-cuts and relaxes. Maybe he’s more impatient than he should be, but he feels like the destination will be safe because of a team who seems to pretty much know what they’re doing.

They pull into a garage somewhere, Frank both lulled to a certain level of sleepiness and on a buzzing high alert. “Ready to get fed?”

“Tell me it’s not nutrition pellets,” falls out of his mouth before he can stop himself. “I mean,” he goes on, “not that I’m not hypothetically grateful but there's a breaking point, fucking hell.” Stinga laughs before admitting that it’s not  _ all _ pellets, and that Demmer would try to fight him for the lion’s share anyway.

Frank checks everything out twice once they’re inside. It’s not like a dead brick box at all. He doesn't know what Instant Potatoes are, but he recognizes the green pepper and the tomato sitting next to the box. “You have fresh stuff.”

“ _We_ have fresh stuff,” says a guy in front of the old-school stove, right before he dumps something from a reused pellet jug into the pot.

Stinga turns to Frank. “That’s Demmer.”

He sees the couch and almost groans at the thought of sinking into it. It’s battered and the center cushion seems pretty flat, and it’s love at first sight. “It’s gonna take a while to finish the food. I’ll leave you two alone,” Demmer says.

Now that he’s slept (on a cushioned surface!) first thing Frank wants to do is eat everything he can get his hands on, then take a long-ass shower.  The next idea is going under the needle, have a memory and a work of art made that they can’t take. Like Demmer’s half-sleeves.

 

Months and months of careful excursions later, the May air is incredible to breathe, throws him into the most zen state he's been in since he was too small to climb trees.

Then he walks right past two suits and winces, automatically changing pace. He tries to pull it off as a loose-yet-purposeful stroll, making a bundle of quick turns and slowing down to one of those Morning Market things that there are always posters for. And then they’re running at him and he runs as fast as he can manage. Half the people standing around are pretty old, and the rest are young parents with children who can’t go to school yet.

He makes brief eye contact with a knit group of suspiciously busy-looking stall minders--not only did they all look down at the same time, but Sunday mornings are never this busy--before blinking to someone standing too nervously, and  _ holy shit is that red paint_. He tries to open his strides, anything to keep the attention. He wants some fucking art on these shitty walls. Is it selfish? Yes. No. It doesn’t matter. Frank stutter-steps to the left, past someone doing shoe repairs. 

The paint guy looks both uninterested and furious, so Frank slows down in front of an open space just long enough for the patrol to have him in range. He knew they were armed before he started running. He’s not fucking stupid, and anyway, he planned chase scenes with these asswipes for years. The shot means enough chaos-outrage at the cops for him to keep running and the painter to keep working.

He is struck behind one knee after the second corner he goes around. The scrapes and bruises mean nothing, he just needs to roll with it. That's when he sees the pair of feet in front of him and knows it’s not just one. Of course they’d kick him while he’s already down. Physically.

“You’re a shit--”

“Had a good run--”

“All grown up--”

“Ready to rot.”

Morning sunlight mocks him as much as he knows these aches will when he’s back in a concrete cube. For now, though, he’s fucking  _ refreshed_. 

 

“You will not be tried. Your sentence is extended to life. You will not be medicated.” So be it.

Frank waggles his eyebrows before they close the door, the high of leaking blood in his mouth not worn off yet.

 

The first sign of life in anything today has been the little note with his food, the front of which said: _ Demmer ate all your pellets. You get the good chow_. The second show of progress is his fresh addition to the counting piles: adding a pellet to the “ones”, then scooting them back under his socks (he never wears them anyway) and adding one to the “tens” group behind the door hinge. He recounts all the piles to make sure he remembers if they clean out his cell. 

_ Hundreds: 6 _

_ Tens: 2 _

_ Ones: 0 _

Right after he falls asleep, he’s shaken awake again. They’re not taking him somewhere else, he’s fucking  _ going _ somewhere else. The bag over his head keeps him anonymous to the cameras, and the bag over the head of the body in his cell does the same. The charge comes, as he knew it would (maybe he held his breath for it a little, but the crew came through fine--have never  _ failed_), and he doesn’t feel guilty for a body already dead. Of natural causes, no less. He made sure the team would check so many times that even Stinga would mock him. It's kind of sad that they can't keep him, but he'll have a job, apparently, so that'll work out fine. He guesses. 

Frank’s contact sets him up with “books on Mitchell, nightmare at the door.” Curfew has been moved up to 9:30 now, and he wants to blend with people just off work. When he pushes open the thick glass door, the guy behind the counter in the back doesn’t look away from his conversation despite the little bell on the inside door handle. The shelves hold a few paperbacks, but mostly downbook codes. It’s kind of breathtaking, all this in one place. Management before books, right. He takes a step forward, then two more, before a hand catches on his arm. He can’t twist away, so he meets the eyes level with his. He doesn’t seem like much, just a wiry guy in a long-sleeved black t-shirt and black jeans. Frank doesn’t even have to break his neck to look at him. “You’re the owner?”

“That’s me.” A smile darts across his whole face, and he pushes his hair out of his way. Frank sees a shape that doesn’t fit with normal shadows on arms.

“Nightmare,” he says, voice a little less relaxed than before, just in case, just in case, just. The guy blinks before smiling, far more broadly this time. “Shit, you’re early to your interview. I’m Pete.”

Interview? “Uh, interview?” Half of him wants to know if he always sounds this intelligent, damn. The rest winces.

“Don’t worry about it. What’s your name?”

“Frank.”

“You’re hired.” What. “You’ll be working in the back,” he says, already walking. Frank matches his pace. “It’s not a bad thing, don’t worry, we just need the right people for it.  _ I _ need the right people for it, anyway. In a couple of weeks this part will be in your hands. The Back Room doesn’t just sell anatomy textbooks and kiddie mysteries, okay?”

Pete leads him through a breakroom, then halfway down some stairs. “This is my favorite part. The banned section. Drop ceiling would have been too obvious, and a lot messier if stuff went to shit, but this wood paneling is handy. This is how you get to the good stuff.” He slides pushes a card from his lanyard between two panels, then a red light between his toes flashes and he pulls it out. Carefully, he pushes inward and two and a half feet of wall swings away. Frank watches him set his foot just to the right, grab a handle in the middle of the open area, and lower himself to the space beneath the stairs. Frank looks down, somewhat distrustful of the weak-ass looking handle

“And don’t take this the wrong way, but most people coming down here are like you. Previous renters have at least one drug test in our books. Send potentials to me, then stick around to watch. It’s not really hard, there isn’t blood or anything.  A buddy of mine got some pH kinda stuff made. Cool shit.”

Frank looks around, taking in neat little shelves. Pete still hasn’t stopped talking. “So, this is our second basement. Newest addition to The Back Room family. Sort of. We already use the radio station to bring in business, but I’ve been meaning to set up passwords. You wanna choose them?”

“If it keeps the whitecoats outside.” Frank shrugs.

 

Things settle down for maybe a month, until Pete opens the door and lets two guys in. He saw the taller of the two less than a week ago, The shorter (not that Frank finds him generally short, the guy’s just taller than him) one looks like he wants to make Frank, like, shit himself, or look for the exits again, whichever happens first. God, they act like Helena’s stories down to the last, tiniest detail. She was always so vivid when she communicated to him. It’s been more than five years and he probably wouldn’t be able to say much without his voice cracking. Quiet and nonthreatening? Quiet and nonthreatening. “So you’re her boys. She talked about you constantly. Did everything for you.” He stops to blink hard a few times.

"I figured. Here’s your book.” The one in glasses hands it over.

"What was your business with using her name casually like that? How many people do you know who threw their lives at this company and, and got stuck in places like  _ that_?" He feels the new one focused on his face, even though Frank keeps his eyes on his own hands, now holding one of the Margaret Atwood paperbacks. 

Frank tilts his head, aiming for arctic hostility. “I threw my life away at twelve.” He adds  _ motherfucker _ in his head for good measure. “How did you think I met her? Knew about you both? I wasn’t her favorite barista, we were the only human contact either of us had. Go find another book.” He takes the time to breathe. Helena never said they’d hold grudge like this, shit. Well, maybe she did, but grandparents always exaggerate. Or so he thought. 

Pete’s head pokes in. “What’s going?”

Frank makes a noncommittal noise. “Muh. Y’know?”

Pete’s eyes roll over the shelves until he sees the guys having a heated conversation. “Just tell me if you need anything.”

They come back to the counter a little later. Frank prices them up. Catch-22 this time. 

“That’s all?” the grouchier one asks the other, a little doubtful. 

“Risk,” says the other one. It’s a good explanation. Frank watches them go, then follows them up a few minutes later. 


	3. handful of sound

It’s January and so, so cold. Helena didn’t come back from her walk, even though she is always back by at least ten; Gerard can’t drive after curfew because he’s not quite eighteen yet, and even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to take Mikey. He doesn’t like it. Mikey keeps saying that he could hide in the footwell, but even that wouldn’t mean he could help look. Itchy, nervous, and nauseous, he sits on the end of her bed, and recalls the black and white shoebox from years ago. He shouldn’t have to feel like this. All through his first hour class, he stares at the wall and no one notices. He’s stuck in a computer lab with the others taking online gym and Japanese II for college credit and government. It’s mind-numbing, and he’s angry about it. He just wants to, well, maybe he doesn’t know what he wants to do. He wants to do something that makes him feel like he’s doing something.

When he picks Mikey up from the middle school, Mikey turns off the radio both times he tries to turn it on. “There’s nothing good,” he says shortly, without looking at him or Gerard trying to say anything. He closes up the garage, a little confused by his mom’s car already parked like it’s waiting. She’s at the kitchen table, Mikey already perched on the edge of a chair next to her, like he doesn’t want to be there. Gerard takes careful steps, sitting on the wobbly chair like he’s ready for flight too.

She looks at him, full-force gaze with bags under her eyes, and says “If you boys don’t stay out of trouble I don’t know what I’ll do with myself. Your grandmother has been arrested. The charges are unavoidable, and permanent, and you can’t send her anything.”

Mikey clearly feels like there’s nothing holding him up. Gerard’s shoulders sag. How is he supposed to do anything now? Not that they had any set routines, but the reality of no longer seeing her reaching for her glasses off of the little side table or locking the front door for the night, that shakes him.

His mother sits on one end of their couch all night; Gerard lies back to back with Mikey and they cry, both alone and together.

They skip two days of school. Mikey mostly stops coming out of his room. Gerard moves into the left side of his room, puts everything right where it was when they were little and had to share. No one complains about the other’s socks or dirty tissues.

The first night, he sleeps uneasily, worn out from trying to hard to adjust to better face the next hour, then the following, then the following. Waking up is hard. His whole head feels fuzzy and he feels the ache in his legs from staying curled up so tightly all night.

The second night, Gerard can’t sleep at all. The numbness comes and goes, limited by knowing that Mikey is so close to him. He can’t tell whether or not he wants it. He’s too exhausted to be sleepy.

In the morning he knows he’s too tired to deal with all the howling and/or deadly silence of the cafeteria today. Gerard’s been in the library enough times to eat lunch in peace. He bolts there as soon as the bell for lunch release starts. He knows where everything is, like cabinets of outdated textbooks, where to go when there are monitors. Even how many cameras and motion-activated efficiency lights, which only semi-matter. For now.

He’s a fiction kind of guy, but the library has barely refreshed its collection in the last ten years. And the items that  _ are _ newer are shit. So maybe, maybe if the older stuff is better, he can migrate to the shelves of old folk tales or whatever. And while he’s at it, he thinks about spending his first class period staring at pages instead of a screen. To do that, though, he’d better check his intended books out later. 

The textbook on government has an eagle and several different pen scribbles on the front. Without the tape on it, the spine would be flopping and the corners separated. It fits beautifully under his sweatshirt. When he puts it in his bag later, no one sees.

He’s jittery all the way home, until he goes into the room that was his until recently and locks the door. He doesn’t come out for  _ hours_. 

Part of him clearly didn’t think the course styles would match up, but he gets no sense of satisfaction for being right. When he was reading about the systems before, it made him picture them with more imagination than strictly necessary. He would change quite a bit, until the mental picture was knit more clearly. What the thin, dog-eared pages in front of him tell him is definitely still something he wants to make changes to. Just not so many. 

Gerard finds himself marking things that strike him for a solid four chapters before he figures out he plans to show it to Mikey. Knew it all along.

He leaves to go into their room, wrapping the book in a sweatshirt in case their mom is home early. She isn’t, and Mikey is in front of his ancient laptop to write a research paper.

“Mikes, I’ve found some stuff that I think you should see.”

Something makes Mikey look up--usually only the prospect of going somewhere can make him even blink--and raise an eyebrow. He sees the book, and the other one slides up too. “Where did it come from?”

“A, uh, cabinet. Just, could you maybe skim it when you get the time? I marked a couple of things.”

Mikey dips his head in a nod, then returns to typing.

 

Helena’s birthday comes and goes three times. Every time it comes, the routine takes him over: Gerard stares down the pill bottles in the cupboard, and the near-empty vodka bottle gathering dust on top of the fridge. He looks long and hard and hates himself for wishing he could bring himself to hold one or the other. He sits on his bed and glares at his door handle until his eyes water. He grabs Mikey’s hand and they both squeeze, hard enough to ache the next day.

The cycle breaks on a shitty day in March. The slush is melting unevenly, leaving grime here and massive puddles there, and revealing the occasional black-grey cigarette butt from some kid who probably thinks they’re all that. The park around the corner only looks a little damp, but Mikey and Gerard both know from long years of experience that it’s complete muck. Basically, the outdoors are miserable.

So is Mikey, after he opens the mail. So is Gerard when he reads over Mikey’s shoulder. So is their mother after she comes home later to find them in the hallway to her mother’s room, legs contorted so they can lean on each other without sliding. She lifts the white sheet that’s clearly been crumpled, uncrumpled, and crumpled again. She only reads as far as “Ms. Way, We regret to inform you that your mother--”

 

“Gerard.” He looks up from his notebook to see Mikey in the doorway. “We should talk about some… some stuff,” he finishes lamely.

“Stuff?”

Mikey crosses his arms, obviously not going to move. He’s watched Gerard bounce from wanting to move out because her room and things are here, to never wanting to even go outside anymore. He’s stood by while his brother threw himself at the studies he hates like they were a brick wall. Maybe he’s barely been in high school for any space of time, but he thinks that by the time  _ he’s _ past twenty-three, he’s going to be doing something more than hating his job.

Gerard looks at him, just waiting.

“Maybe she didn’t tell us where she went at night, Gee, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t know.”

“You were really little.” He’s bowed over the notebook again.

“She always looked like she had been worn down to the bones before she left, you know? And then when she came back, she had dirt under her nails or paint on the sole of a shoe. Her face was a little tougher and more at peace.” Gerard mutters comments, like if Mikey would just pick them up instead of talking, everything would fix itself. “I recall watching you stand in the hallway one night, peeking around the corner and watching her pour herself pink lemonade, with a can of  _ spray paint _ under one arm. Don’t you dare tell me what I’m talking about. You know she did it for us.”

“Mikey, you just--”

“Even if she didn’t tell us she knew what we saw, or even put her stuff where we could find it.” He sets a faded black shoebox with a dingy white lid at the foot of the bed. “You’ve shown me contraband. Suppressing won’t fucking save anyone. Look through it for me.”

“I’ll think about it,” Gerard says, half bored and half beaten. But his eyes are glued to the box and the pencil in his hand is down now.

Mikey settles himself on the couch with the radio on, just to have something to listen to. Gerard comes out of the kitchen later with coffee for him. “Once. Patterns are too risky.” Mikey feels something catch in his throat.

“Okay.” Whatever he wants; Mikey just wants him to reconcile his frustration with his skill. Pushing it down beyond the thoughts he has every day, that’s going to hurt him if it hasn’t already. He leaves again, and Mikey fools with the tuner, scrolls the little tick mark all the way from one side to the other at top speed, then does it slowly enough for the stations to focus briefly. Between two dull piano stations, he gets a buzz, like there’s some kind of potential station. Everything else comes in fine. His finger hovers above the off button, and when the static snaps into a voice, he barely hears “It’s just late enough to start lookin’ alive again--” before he pushes the button in surprise. He scrambles to turn it on again before he misses anything more. “--shorter time, dolls, so I’ll leave you to the Queens of the Stone Age top five. Even though that’s just about all of their stuff we’ve got.” Something drastically contrasting the guy’s voice comes from the speakers, and it’s sending adrenaline through him. And shivers. He feels like he should be moving, or singing with it, even though those are terrible ideas. The music makes his bones feel different, and the couch, and his clothes. He lets his eyes close. Just feels it change him until the guy’s chatter comes back after the last song.

“We’re pulling up short but the news section is slow today aside from a couple inkspots saying there’s a potential collection of Wham! vinyl being brought in by Sunday. I double-desert-dog dare you to keep coming back for more. This is Dr. D, signing off. Goodnight and good morning, all you treasures with our antennae in your ears.” There’s a small pause, and then the channel is all static again, like nothing happened. Mikey lets out a breath. The good stuff isn’t dead. One AM on a Thursday night, and the good stuff isn’t dead. 

They planned for spring, but it’s the edge of summer by the time they’re actually ready. “I don’t know if they do DNA, so just scrub up. We’re brushed and hairsprayed to within an inch of our lives, so that won't be awful, and we have the putty and the plastic inserts to change our face shapes.” Last night he sat next to Gerard to find any last gaps in their plan. He didn’t (doesn’t) think they have any.

He sits beside Gerard in the present, too, slowly turning a can end over end just like he is, not complaining when he goes over the plan again.

“If they gawk at something, we gawk. Don’t stand too still. Don’t walk too close to the blocked end of the street. Don’t look like you’re running away,” Gerard lists. “Quick shakes, I speed paint, let it dry for a handful of seconds, ditch the outer layers so we don’t smell, keep the gloves in our pockets until we get to the café. Keep your shoes tight and your paint close, I don’t want it knocked out of your hand for anything.”

“Gee.” He bumps Gerard’s shoulder with his own. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

He shakes it and it clicks in quick notes like the radio station does just before its announcer comes on air, and springs to his feet. Mikey stands slightly behind him, slouched to the full extent of his body, protecting him. Paint at the ready. 

Watching the can rise and fall out of the corner of his eye slices the jumble of everything he observes into an organized focus. 

Gerard’s arm jerks down, and he looks to the commotion with everyone else. The guy crashing through the crowd makes direct eye contact with him, and he shoves through a little group of middle-aged men to run away at top speed. The suits trail him out, and Gerard gets back to work. If it’s a little sloppy because he’s shaken, so be it. It’s still better than no tribute at all. She deserved better than one slopped-up row of circles on a dirty wall, but they point directly to the sky as if somebody could get there by craning their necks in front of it. It makes her feel closer.

When the suits come back, runner in tow, Gerard locks down into Paranoia Mode. He doesn’t look at Mikey. Doesn’t speak to the owner of the stall that the kit was under. Barely spares a glance to the suits but instead at the guy slung between them, like everyone else is.

 

Their mother gets a notice of transfer to North Carolina right after Gerard starts training as a manager in a café. “It’s a long way from home, but there’s no money for us here. Mom tried to leave a lot for us, but if we’re going to keep the house, it’s not that much. I won’t be able to stay here, I barely can as is,” she says. “I’m getting old anyway, so I guess that move down to Florida won’t be too hard later, hm?” She’s trying really hard to make light of it, but has moments of quiet excitement and of sadness. Gerard and Mikey both help her pack. Maybe things really are better there.

 

Mikey doesn’t spend as much time in his room anymore, choosing to listen to the radio instead. Every time Gerard walks in, it feels like he’s interrupting something important. His hand is always on the dial. “Anything good out of the pianos today?” he asks once. Mikey looked so brightened or content or some shit that he’d had to ask. Mikey doesn’t know, but sometimes, Gerard pictures Mikey’s stomach doing a victory dance while his brain is afraid and his body is still. This is one of the times it’s fit him with the most truth. “Um, something like that,” Mikey offers.

Gerard leaves and Mikey feels kind of bad for being short with him, but Dr. D has been spinning more Anthrax lately, and he’s completely addicted. He can even tell the difference between a CD and a record and a tape based on the way the intros sound. It’s getting harder to hold back from trying out the guy’s slang, too. Some nights he writes the words and lyrics on copy paper, layer over layer on the same sheet until it’s black and he hides it under Helena’s old mattress. 

He is lucky enough to turn twenty-one to the soundwaves of The Smashing Pumpkins and Bratmobile and The Strokes.

 

Gerard knows that something has been different about Mikey. He speaks in the exact same way he always has and sounds like someone else. There’s a tightness about how he carries himself. He’s started drumming his fingers on everything now and Gerard is afraid he’ll get onto the wrong side of whatever the fuck law is in effect that makes people disappear. Not get tried and tossed into the seemingly bottomless prison, but vanished. Families acting like they don’t understand what’s going on or why anyone would ask about  _ that _ person.

Mikey comes home later than he should be on a Friday with a banned book--Gerard can tell by the cover color alone--one day and he can’t cap the panic pressurizing his chest against air. “Do you  _ want to be separated_, Mikey? Because this is a fast fucking track. They’re going to know something sooner or later and I'd rather live out more of our lives together than apart. You’re more to me than a goddamn _ ghost_, why can’t you--I don’t want you to be gone like she is. We shouldn’t have painted, we’re getting sick like all the pill-people say.” 

“At least I don’t try to be,” Mikey returns levelly, nothing but tone letting Gerard know that the idea of pills fucking burns him up with something he can't put a word to. He feels tears queuing in the space under his eyes, but they don’t come out until shame in his stomach does, so fast and strong that it makes him throw up everything he’s tried to eat today. _“_ Fucking _christ_ ,” he says weakly.

Mikey wipes at both their faces with a dirty shirt and puts  _ The Handmaid’s Tale _ in his hand. “Gerard, the wall project helped you, but you have to stop pretending that the laws are fine and the human body doesn’t need color. You read it first.”

 

Gerard reads it all in two days and is enraged by nearly every page, except for the beginning, which was when he was still getting used to the setting. When he finishes it, he wakes Mikey up. “This is horrible.” Mikey blinks at him. “You should read it.” Fuck. If everything they ban would make him feel so worked up, he could almost understand why things are how they are. As it is, all he wants is more. The set of his jaw and shoulders must say it pretty eloquently, because Mikey snorts and says, “We can get another one on Friday.”

 

Mikey pushes open the door and holds it for Gerard. 

“Hey.”

“Hey, Pete.”

“Are you looking for anything specific today?”

Mikey adjusts his glasses and says, “Helena.”

“Right this way,” Pete says.  _ That’s _ the fucking way into whatever this is? “Your friend needs a test, Way.”

“Mikey,” he says under his breath. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Spit on the paper and follow the nice man,” Mikey says, equally quiet. But he looks like he’s keeping something. In spite of himself, Gerard watches the paper turn pink as he sits at a tiny breakroom table, Pete watching like a concerned parent. The third time he checks his watch, the paper is red. He grins. “We keep forget-me-please syringes in the fridge for people who don’t pass. You did, though,” he assures when Gerard goes white. “Come on.”

He goes into the wall first, then Mikey and Gerard, and they both face the guy under the stairs at a miniscule counter.

He looks different now, Gerard notices, but he’s pretty obviously the asshole that shook up the police when he was trying to take care of an illegal project to celebrate his grandmother, and sort of other people still doing it, too. He looks both of them in the face and says, “So you’re her boys.”

Mikey opens his mouth like he wants to say something, Gerard is still all thunderclouds and glares, kicks Mikey’s ankle before he says anything. Waits.

"She talked about you two constantly," he says softly. "Did everything for you."

"I figured," Mikey says, low and a little rough on the edge. “Here’s your book.”

Gerard looks at him, intending to meet his eyes. "What was your business with using her name casually like that? How many people do you know who threw their lives at this company and, and got stuck in places like  _ that_?" he spits. 

“I threw my life away at twelve. How did you think I met her? Knew about you both?” He says it all slowly and frostily. “I wasn’t her favorite barista, we were the only human contact either of us had. Go find another book.”

Mikey immediately shoves Gerard out from under the sloped ceiling and drags him off to the shelves. “Fucking relax, okay? This isn’t as big of a shitheap as you’re making it out to be.”

“I’ve about had it with how relaxed you are about all of this, Mikey. Jesus, you just waltz in looking like yourself and walking like yourself, throwing name-passwords around like it’s no problem if somebody sees you. You carried that book--which is enough to get arrested over, just in case you forgot betweeen the last time I told you and this time--all the way here with it shoved in your pocket.”

“It’s a little book.”

“Your  _ pocket_, Mikes.” 

“Fine,  _ my pocket_. They can’t make me unread it. They can’t make me think inside the maze, shit, they can’t make me picture it. Can you imagine us on pills?” 

Gerard immediately dismisses it. “We don’t need them.”

“Unless we have something that’s better for us than static, what’s the point of not being on them?”

Mikey watches Gerards turn around, and stand there for so long Mikey thinks he might be having some battle, but when he reaches forward to lift something from the shelf, he realizes that Gerard was eyeing titles to find something good to pick up.

“I’m fine with having just one in the house,” he says quietly when Gerard tilts his head to the shelves. 

Gerard looks behind them while Mikey signs responsibility for the book, puzzling over how this many books survived. If others did. If the confiscators locked them up or burned them. His head turns when he hears the price of the rental. “That’s all?”

“Risk,” Mikey says. Right.


End file.
